reverse transcriptase, also called RNA-directed DNA polymerase, an enzyme encoded from the genetic material of retroviruses that catalyzes the transcription of retrovirusRNA (ribonucleic acid) into DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). This catalyzed transcription is the reverse process of normal cellular transcription of DNA into RNA, hence the names reverse transcriptase and retrovirus. Reverse transcriptase is central to the infectious nature of retroviruses, several of which cause disease in humans, including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), and human T-cell lymphotrophic virus I (HTLV-I), which causes leukemia. Reverse transcriptase is also a fundamental component of a laboratory technology known as reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), a powerful tool used in research and in the diagnosis of diseases such as cancer.

Retroviruses consist of an RNA genome contained within a protein shell that is enclosed in a lipid envelope. The retrovirus genome is typically made up of three genes: the group-specific antigen gene (gag), the polymerase gene (pol), and the envelope gene (env). The pol gene encodes the three enzymes—protease, reverse transcriptase, and integrase—that catalyze the steps of retroviral infection. Once a retrovirus is inside a host cell (a process mediated by protease), it takes over the host’s genetic transcription machinery to construct a DNA provirus. This process, the conversion of retroviral RNA to proviral DNA, is catalyzed by reverse transcriptase and is necessary for proviral DNA insertion into host DNA—a step initiated by the integrase enzyme.

Early retrovirus observations

For many years there existed a paradigm in molecular biology known as the “central dogma.” This asserted that DNA is first transcribed into RNA, RNA is translated into amino acids, and amino acids assemble into long chains, called polypeptides, that make up proteins—the functional units of cellular life. However, while this central dogma is true, as with many paradigms of biology, important exceptions can be found.

The first important observation opposing the central dogma came in the early 20th century. Two Danish researchers, Vilhelm Ellerman and Oluf Bang, were able to transmit leukemia to six chickens in succession by infecting the first animal with a filterable agent (now known as a virus) and then infecting each subsequent animal with the blood of the preceding bird. At the time, only palpable malignant tumours were understood to be cancers. Therefore, this observation was not linked to a viral-induced malignancy because leukemia was not then known to be a cancer. (At the time, leukemia was thought to be the result of some manner of bacterial infection.)

In 1911 American pathologist Peyton Rous, working at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research (now Rockefeller University), reported that healthy chickens developed malignant sarcomas (cancers of connective tissues) when infected with tumour cells from other chickens. Rous investigated the tumour cells further, and from them, he isolated a virus, which was later named Rous sarcoma virus (RSV). However, the concept of infectious cancer drew little support, and, unable to isolate viruses from other cancers, Rous abandoned the work in 1915 and did not return to it until 1934. Decades later the significance of his discoveries was realized, and in 1966—more than 55 years after his first experiment, at the age of 87—Rous was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his discovery of tumour-inducing viruses.

DNA provirus hypothesis

In the mid-20th century there were many advances in molecular biology, including the description of DNA in 1953 by American geneticist and biophysicist James D. Watson and British biophysicists Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins. By the 1960s it was understood that sarcomas are caused by a mutation that results in uncontrolled cell division. It was also evident that RSV was inherited during the division of cancerous cells. This inheritance occurred in a manner agreeing with the Mendelian laws of genetic inheritance—laws that heretofore had been understood to apply only to DNA molecules (see the articles genetics and heredity).

Scientists hypothesized that, in order for such viral inheritance to occur, a virus would need to transcribe its RNA genome into DNA and then insert this DNA into the host cell genome. Once incorporated into the host genome, the virus would be transcribed as though it were another gene and could produce more RNA virus from its DNA. This hypothesis, called the “DNA provirus hypothesis,” was developed in the late 1950s by American virologist Howard Martin Temin, when he was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Italian virologist Renato Dulbecco at the California Institute of Technology. Temin’s hypothesis was formally proposed in 1964. The provirus hypothesis came about when experiments demonstrated that an antibiotic called actinomycin D, which is capable of inhibiting DNA and RNA synthesis, inhibited the reproduction of RSV. However, the concept of an RNA molecule’s turning itself into DNA drew very few supporters.

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